Objectives Clinical academics lead research to deliver medical advancements while also teaching in medical schools to maintain high-quality medical services. The objective of this project was to determine if there is a sufficient supply of clinical academics for UK medical schools.

Design Retrospective cohort study.

Setting Data were extracted from the UK Medical Education Database and the General Medical Council (GMC) annual National Trainee Survey between 2012 and 2022.

Participants 1769 registered UK doctors with academic training and a certificate of completion of training.

Main outcome measure The percentage of doctors with clinical and academic training who ended up as incumbent clinical academics at UK medical schools.

Results Approximately 50% of doctors with clinical and academic training were matched as incumbent clinical academics at UK medical schools. There was a low annual rate of incumbent clinical academics leaving their post.

Conclusion Either clinical academic trainees do not find jobs at medical schools, or they do not want the jobs that are available. These results are indicative but not conclusive as generalisation is compromised by inconsistent disclosure of data by medical schools. We discuss variables which may contribute to the loss of clinical academics and explore the health economic case for clinical academic incentive packages to improve return on training investment.